RConversation

"Authoritarian Deliberation" on the Chinese Internet

Earlier today in Beijing, Chinese President Hu Jintao did a webcast with staff of "Strong China Forum," an online forum run by the People's Daily Online. See the English transcript here and the Chinese here.

More than 300 questions for President Hu were posted in advance by forum members. He only answered two softballs.  One thread on Tianya reflects some people's dismay that the whole thing was "over as soon as it started."  There has been some web chatter saying that not many people were able to get into that chatroom. The questions at Strong China Forum are supposed to be here, but so far I've been unable to access the page from my internet connection in London, even when I use a Chinese proxy.  Fortunately the folks at China Digital Times got on, and provided this summary:

"Some complained, “Old Hu, lots of government money has been wasted by officials on feasts. Why don’t you stop it?” ” Why haven’t our salaries been increased while the prices of everything else are skyrocketing? “; “The stock market and housing market are collapsing. It is hard to find a job…”"

Some asked about policy and political issues, including some tricky ones: “What do you think of Taiwan’s democratization?” ; “How would you deal with wrong but well-intentioned opinions on the Internet?”

Despite the whole thing being gimmicky and generally content-free, I found the final part of Hu's webcast interesting:

Hu Jintao: We pay great attention to suggestions and advice from our netizens. We stress the idea of "putting people first" and "governing for the people." With this in mind, we need to listen to people's voices extensively and pool the people's wisdom when we take actions and make decisions. The web is an important channel for us to understand the concerns of the public and assemble the wisdom of the public.

Forum: Thanks you, Mr. General-Secretary. Dear friends, General-Secretary Hu Jintao's communication must conclude now as he has other things to do.

Hu Jintao: It is a pity that I cannot communicate more with the netizens today due to the time constraint. However, I will read and think carefully the comments and questions posted for me by our netizens.

As the BBC put it: "Mr Hu's appearance on a chat forum suggests that the party at least knows the importance of listening to the public." (UPDATE: More from Danwei.org here.)

As it happens, I just finished reading a book by Zheng Yongnian of Nottingham University titled Technological Empowerment: The Internet, State, and Society in China. It's an academic book which means that it costs an outrageous US$50 and is also dry and not written in a particularly entertaining style. But for anybody trying to make sense of how the Internet is changing Chinese politics and society, it's well worth a read if you can afford it or get somebody else (your institution's library or your company) to pay for it. 

Zheng argues that while China is making no meaningful progress toward democratization, the Internet is nonetheless causing "political liberalization." The Internet in China, he believes, is enabling greater public deliberation about policy (within limits to be sure) as well as forcing the leadership to be more responsive to public opinion - or at least that segment of public opinion that is able to appear on the part of the Internet that you can access in China, which despite its limitations still gives Chinese citizens a conduit of expression that was not available before. Zheng points to several cases where public reaction to and discussion of information posted online led to policy changes: outrage over Sun Zhigang's death in detention led to abolition of the "Custody and Repatriation" system; outrage over the detention of outspoken rural business tycoon Sun Dawu created pressure on provincial governments and the central government  to change policy practices that discriminate against the private sector. During the SARS outbreak, information, concerns (and wild rumors) posted on the Internet and sent through mobile SMS eventually broke down government attempts at tight information control. He also points to wildly unsuccessful cases: use of the Internet by the outlawed FLG and the opposition China Democracy Party to criticize the regime and call for an end to one-party rule by the CCP. What's the difference?

Zheng says that the difference between success and failure comes down to an online movement's strategy and objectives. The most spectacularly unsuccessful online movements (and the ones leading to the most brutal crackdowns both online and off) tend to advocate what he calls the "exit" option - i.e. that the Chinese people should exit one-party CCP rule, or that a particular group or territory might have the right to do so. The Chinese bureaucracy and leadership contains reformists and conservatives. However "when the regime is threatened by challengers, the soft-liners and hard-liners are likely to stand on the same side and fight the challengers."  Successful online movements in China tend to use what he calls the "voice" option, or what other political scientists call the "cooperation option." The key to a successful effort to change government policy in China is to find a way to give reformist leaders and bureaucrats at all levels of government the ammunition they need to win out in arguments and power-struggles with their hard-line conservative colleagues. Reformists can point to what's being said in the chatrooms and blogs and in the edgier newspapers and argue that without change, there will be more unrest and public unhappiness - thus change is required to save the regime. Zheng writes: "the voice does not aim to undermine or overthrow the state. Instead, through a voice mechanism, the state can receive feedback from social groups to respond to state decline and improve its legitimacy." 

In a similar vein, at the Chinese Internet Research Conference last week Jiang Min, an Assistant Professor at UNC-Charlotte, presented a paper titled Authoritarian Deliberation: Public Deliberation in China. Her argument centers around the idea - oft overlooked by Western punditry - that it's possible to have substantial amount of public deliberation about policy within an authoritarian state. Different authoritarian states have different levels of deliberation, and it's no substitute for the "democratic deliberation" in democratic countries when it comes to the ability of the governed to influence their government. Thus political deliberation needs to be divided into two categories: democratic and authoritarian.  Within the "authoritarian" category, China is seeing growing amounts of deliberation taking place thanks to the Internet. Click here for a live-blogged summary of that session.

Immediately following her presentation came talks by Xiao Qiang of China Digital Times and Ashley Esreay of Harvard's Fairbank Center and Middlebury. (Click here for the blog summary.) Xiao (whose paper will be made available on the circ.asia website in the coming week) described numerous examples of how the Internet is enabling the powerless to challenge the powerful. Esreay, in his paper titled Political Discourse on Chinese Blogs presented the findings of his empirical research. (See the WSJ writeup of his presentation here.) He compared content on blogs and newspapers discussing news events in 2006 and found that 61% percent of blog posts analyzed contained "some form of criticism", compared to 19% of all newspaper articles analyzed. 36% percent of blog posts contained "pluralism" or discussion of more than one point of view, while only 5% of newspaper articles did. Thus he was able to empirically confirm the unscientific impression of most people who follow the Chinese Internet: "Compared to the content of mainstream, traditional media, blogs are much more likely to contain opposing perspectives and criticism of the state."  I found his findings about blogs as economic watchdogs particularly interesting: "Another important finding was that bloggers criticize corporations five times more frequently than journalists, whose role in democratic societies has been to protect the interests of the public from transgression."

Here's a breakdown of the kinds of criticism found in the Chinese blog posts (click to enlarge):

...Which brings me to Roland Soong's presentation on Day 1, A Psychographic Segment of Chinese Bloggers. Using survey data about Chinese Internet users collected by the media research company he works for, Roland "created a 3-segment solution based upon 32 psychographic statements about personality, motivation, society, culture, technology and so on by the K-means algorithm" Here is how Roland describes three different kinds of people now coexisting in the Chinese blogosphere:

Segment 1: Not interested in latest technology; not interested in latest fashion; not interested in other people's opinions; don't want to told what to do ... Who do they sound like?  Fenqing (angry young people)?

Segment 2: Easily swayed by other people; want to be told what to do; first to buy latest technology; follow western lifestyle; lesser respect for tradition ... Who do they sound like?  These are groupies who follow whatever is au courant as reported on the Internet.

Segment 3: Interested in a lifestyle filled with challenges, novelties and changes; more interested in spending time meaningfully than just making money; ready to pay extra for environment-friendly products; appreciate companies which support public causes; willing to volunteer personal time for good causes ...

The data was collected before the Sichuan Earthquake, but in his talk, Roland suggests that it is this third group who came into their own and made their presence felt in the aftermath of the earthquake. Deborah Fallows suggested that the earthquake may have been a "break through" moment for the way in which people use the Internet, as 9/11 was for people in the U.S.

In his Sunday afternoon talk, Isaac Mao repeated his core view that the Chinese people need free-thinking before they can have free speech.  He also believes that the Internet is facilitating the evolution of an increasingly sophisticated "social brain", which he believes "will be the key in the future of this country." 

USC graduate student Peter Marolt, in his PhD dissertation, is attempting to create a new conceptual framework to help us understand what is going on in China. He is working to map how "spaces of dissent" come into being, and what is the linkage between deliberation and action.

...Which brings me back to  the beginning of my last post and Lokman Tsui's argument: that cold-war paradigms, based on the information environment and state-society relations in the countries that once comprised the Soviet Block, are not only hindering the outside world's understanding of China but are contributing to misguided policies.  This is not to say one shouldn't support efforts by many people in China to obtain greater freedom of speech and the right to choose their leaders. Of course we should.  The point is, strategies and approaches should be grounded in actual facts rather than over-simplified, romantic cold-war notions, or these efforts will not only fail but will also be rejected and denounced by the people you're ostensibly trying to help.

Next week at the Global Voices Summit in Budapest, we'll be spending the first day talking about how free speech advocacy can be improved and upgraded for the Internet age. I hope we'll be addressing some tough questions about what works - and what no longer works so well - when it comes to the strategies and tactics of today's human rights organizations and movements. What can the Chinese people do to convince Hu Jintao to pay attention to their concerns? Is there anything that well-meaning outsiders who care about China can constructively do to facilitate that process (or at least not hinder it) and if so what is it?

The latest viral video iteration: No You Can't

(Hat tip Micah Sifry)

In case you were considering McCain...

Are you American? VOTE!

Perhaps this video will help inspire you! If you're an American citizen living abroad don't forget to vote in the Global Democratic Primary starting on Tuesday. If you didn't register to vote online, you can still vote in person at voting centers in 33 countries. Click here for the full list. 22 delegates representing Democrats living overseas are at stake, and in this primary, every single delegate counts.

I hope you'll vote for Obama. He can make us proud to be an American once again in ways that I don't think Clinton will be able to do - though I'll take her over McCain any day. Obama's election would prove that despite my country's considerable hypocrisy, the American dream and the values we claim to espouse actually can mean something real.

As many people have pointed out, last week's debate in L.A. showed that Clinton and Obama are extremely close on policy substance. But what they represent as people ends up being quite important in terms of where the United States is headed in the future. Obama represents a generational shift and a new direction for the country, and I really do think he will inspire a new generation to feel that they can make a difference in public affairs to a much greater extent than Clinton can; Clinton represents dynastic politics, back-to-the-90s-with-Bill-back-in-the-white-house, and a much more familiar form of democrat vs. republican partisanship. But don't just take it from me. Andrew Sullivan has an excellent essay on today's Times of London arguing why Obama is the best candidate. On the Huffington Post, Sherman Yellen explains how his family is split down the middle, and why he's voting for Obama despite his strong admiration for Clinton. Dave Winer wrote a couple of great posts last month about how the Clintons have thoroughly turned him off. My former Berkman colleague David Weinberger recently wrote this eloquent endorsement after Edwards dropped out:

I have to look back to being a high school kid handing out leaflets for Bobby Kennedy to find the same sense of hope that Obama inspires in me. In part, I think, it’s the pure youth of the candidate. My generation had its chance and produced Bill Clinton and He Who Needs Forgetting. Time for us to pass on the baton, as quickly as possibly. And, in part it’s the sense of common cause, common enthusiasm, and common hope across this country’s class and race lines. It’s awe-inspiring and oh so best-of-America to be out in streets dappled with so many colors.

Then there’s this: With McCain the likely Republican candidate, it’ll be character vs. character. And in that matchup, Obama is by far the Democrats’ best choice.

Here are the final three paragraphs of the Los Angeles Times' endorsement of Obama, which I hope will convince you if you're still on the fence:

Clinton's return to the White House that she occupied for eight years as first lady would resurrect some of the triumph and argument of that era. Yes, Bill Clinton's presidency was a period of growth and opportunity, and Democrats are justly nostalgic for it. But it also was a time of withering political fire, as the former president's recent comments on the campaign trail reminded the nation. Hillary Clinton's election also would drag into a third decade the post-Reagan political duel between two families, the Bushes and the Clintons. Obama is correct: It is time to turn the page.

An Obama presidency would present, as a distinctly American face, a man of African descent, born in the nation's youngest state, with a childhood spent partly in Asia, among Muslims. No public relations campaign could do more than Obama's mere presence in the White House to defuse anti-American passion around the world, nor could any political experience surpass Obama's life story in preparing a president to understand the American character. His candidacy offers Democrats the best hope of leading America into the future, and gives Californians the opportunity to cast their most exciting and consequential ballot in a generation.

In the language of metaphor, Clinton is an essay, solid and reasoned; Obama is a poem, lyric and filled with possibility. Clinton would be a valuable and competent executive, but Obama matches her in substance and adds something that the nation has been missing far too long -- a sense of aspiration.

If you're in Hong Kong, come vote at Dublin Jack's in Central on Tuesday night from 6-9pm A group of Obama supporters (myself included) will be there. There will be two more opportunities to vote in person: the Flying Pan on Sunday Feb.10 from 4-6pm, and again at Dublin Jack's on Tuesday Feb. 12 from 6-9. More info here.

Vote the Bastards Out!

You can download the HTML code for this countdown clock here.

I have started a new tag in Delicious. votethebastardsout!

My first two items tagged in this way are:

Wired News - AP News - Cheney Wants Surveillance Law Expanded

Rummy Resurfaces, Calls for U.S. Propaganda Agency | Danger Room from Wired.com

If you use Delicious (or any other social bookmarking service for that matter), please feel free to contribute to the pile.

The power of Cyber-Grannies: Gender equality and the Internet

The woman in this photo is a 77-year old Ugandan grandmother named Anastasia. She is illiterate, but managed to get "hooked" on computers thanks to an interactive CD full of pictures and sound explaining how women in Uganda can use technology to make money. According to Nancy Hafkin, a leading scholar on technology, development, and gender, Anastasia "used the information on the CD to raise her income from raising chickens and now travels through her district to promote awareness among women, especially those without formal education, on how new information technologies can improve their well-being."

Anastasia's new career as cyber-granny didn't just happen because somebody donated money for a bunch of computer centers and cyber cafes in Uganda. Her new-found role is thanks to an organization called WOUGNET (Women of Uganda Network), an organization that has put a lot of effort into figuring out how to make computers accessible to women who are badly educated or illiterate, how to make technology relevant to solving problems in women's daily lives, and how to create female-friendly environments in which women have the opportunity and time to learn. Here is a video shot by WOUGNET, documenting the challenges that women in one community in Uganda face in trying to use the local computer center:

These stories were part of a luncheon talk on gender and technology at the Berkman Center by Nancy Hafkin editor of a new book called Cinderella or Cyberella? Empowering Women in Knowledge Society. She posed several challenges to common assumptions that technology is "gender neutral."  Many people assume that the introduction of computers and the Internet into a society will transform everybody's lives positively, and that the technology naturally "trickles down" to benefit both women and men.

Colleagues Ethan Zuckerman and David Weinberger have both blogged the talk in detail, but here are my major take-aways:

• Just because you introduce the Internet into a society doesn't mean that it will be used equally by men and women. Interestingly, the percentage of women vs. men using the Internet vary widely from country to country  - where there are statistics on this at all. In some countries with widespread Internet penetration (the U.S., Canada, and Hong Kong for example)  Internet useage is split fairly evenly between men and women. While in other countries with high levels of Internet penetration there is significant disparity (France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK). Same in developing countries with low Internet penetration: in some developing countries with low Internet penetration, there are nonetheless relatively equal numbers of men and women using the Internet, while in other countries with similarly low Internet penetration levels, the relative proportion of men and women using the Internet is badly skewed. What this shows is that there are lots of social and cultural factors that dictate the extent to which women will take advantage of the Internet's existence in their country. It also means that choices made by people with power and money - education policy choices, business model choices, and development project funding choices - can all make a difference. Unfortunately Hafkin believes that policymakers, NGO's, and businesses tend to lack awareness about the gender implications of their decisions about how technology will be implemented, taught, or marketed.  Hopefully, her ongoing research will help make them more aware.

• You can't assume that technology - just by virtue of existing in a society - will bring immediate positive benefits to women's lives. In fact there may be ways in which the technology might worsen women's lives in the short term. Hafkin brought up the fact that the Internet has fed the growth of the porn industry and the child porn industry, which in some parts of the world increases the victimization of girls and women. She also pointed to studies in some parts of Africa that indicate increased domestic violence arising after women attempt to use the Internet or mobile phones, because their husbands and fathers tended to interpret this as an effort to communicate with other men. She did not raise this as an argument against the spread of technology, but rather to point out that women in some communities may first come into contact with technology via negative experiences such as these, which may in turn cause women and their parents to view technology as a male realm that they had best avoid in order to be safe. This context needs to be understood and kept in mind when we are thinking about questions of gender equality in the use of technology. How do you create opportunities for use of technology that will not feel threatening to women or to family members who may control what they can or can't do?

• In communities where Internet and computer resources are scarce, women and girls will be left behind if they don't feel safe or if circumstances to use the technology are stacked against them.  It appears that in developing countries where there is relative gender parity of Internet use, one major reason is that a lot of women are working in the formal economy - i.e., in offices that have computers. Many "ICT4D" (internet and communication technology for development) projects created in rural communities by well meaning non-governmental organizations often fail to create environments that are conducive to women and girls being able to use that technology as easily as men and boys. Parents and husbands tend to be leery of a woman's reasons for wanting to go and spend a few hours a week in a computer center. Cyber-cafes are often full of men watching porn and playing violent games, creating an environment in which women don't feel comfortable and or which parents forbid their daughters from entering.

Hafkin argues that women can basically have a "Cinderella" relationship with technology or a "Cyberella" relationship with technology, hence the title of her book.  According to two of her slides which she generously shared:

Cinderella:

• Works in the basement of knowledge society (if she works at all)
• Has little opportunity to reap its benefits
• Waits for "her prince" to decide the benefits she will receive

Most women around the world today are Cinderella. Hafkin believes the goal is for Cinderella to become Cyberella, who is:

• Fluent in the uses of technology
• Comfortable using and designing computer, technology and communication equipment, software, and in working in virtual spaces
• Devises innovative uses for technologies across problems and subjects
• Finds information and knowledge to improve her life and expand choices
• Active knowledge creator and disseminator 
• More than a user, designs information and knowledge systems to improve all aspects of her life.

Will Cinderellas magically transform into Cyberellas over time? Initial research indicates that the answer is not necessarily.

This is where cyber-granny comes back into the picture. Hafkin mentioned the Grameen phone project, in which village women in Bangladesh and elsewhere are given micro-loans to create businesses in which they rent out uses of mobile phones. What if women like Anastasia could get capital and support, systematically, to run computer and Internet kiosks in their villages? Would that create environments that would feel more friendly to women, and less threatening to their parents and husbands? Hafkin said that in India and elsewhere there are village Internet kiosk projects, some of which are run by women. She pointed out that it would be interesting to see some statistics comparing the number of female customers at women-run cyber-centers versus the numbers of women using other cyber-cafes and computer centers in similar areas.

Why am I writing about all this at such length? Because I've been thinking a great deal lately (in between packing and winding up various projects before I move to Hong Kong) about the question of how policy and business choices affect the extent to which the Internet is or is not transformative for different kinds of people.  Hafkin's work is important because it highlights how - if we really want technology to make the world a better place for everybody - spreading computers and Internet access around as widely as possible is certainly a start, but it's probably not going to be enough.

U.S. Military censorship?

Whatever gripes we may have, at the moment most Americans have a lot more freedoms and rights than most Chinese. This is without question. But will it stay that way? Not unless we work to keep it so.

In the past few months I've started predicting to friends and colleagues that if trends continue on their current trajectory, in a few more decades there may be little difference between the U.S. and Chinese governments as far as censorship, surveillance, limits on freedom of expression, use of propaganda, and manipulation of the public are concerned. And if that does happen, it will be because the majority of Americans allowed it to happen in the name of national security, fighting terrorism, and protecting our kids from perverts - which are incidentally the same excuses that the Chinese government gives the Chinese public, and which many people there are inclined to accept as well.

Yesterday, Wonkette and Daily Kos reported that U.S. Airforce personnel have been blocked from accessing their sites - while conservative political sites remain accessible. One reader wrote to Wonkette:

It seems that every non-conservative politics website has been blocked by our firewall guys…including your site. The reason it is blocked is because it is a “personal page.” Which means they don’t have a reason to block it … but they want to block it, so they do. This was done recently, just in time for mid-term elections. As I said, it was not only your website, I have gone through lists of liberal sites and most of them are blocked. I’ve also taken the time to go to some conservative sites….none of which are blocked.

Cyber-activist Nart Villeneuve has investigated the technical side of what's happening here, specifically retracing the cause of one error message received by a person with an army e-mail address who tried to access one blog, The Memory Hole. He found that the error message matched one used by a product developed by the company BlueCoat using a URL database from another commercial filtering product, SmartFilter. Nart does not conclude that the blocking was intentional, however:

The facts indicate that http://www.thememoryhole.org/memoryblog/ is blocked, most likely by a BlueCoat appliance configured with SmartFilter 3.0. But the site is not classified as “Extreme;Politics/Religion” but simply “Politics/Religion”? The most likeley explanation is that the military is filtering the “Extreme” category and not using to the most recent version of the SmartFilter database. At some point the Memory Hole was probably doubly classified as Extreme and Politics/Religion and, if the military has not updated their blocking lists, is blocked by the military as a result.

Innocent error? Honest mistake? Certainly, there is plenty of technical-error-deniability- wiggle-room here. But why did this "error" only just manifest itself recently in the runup to a congressional election where the Republicans might lose their  majority? 

I am reminded of my efforts to transmit politically sensitive TV reports by satellite from Beijing when I was working there for CNN in the 1990's (in the pre-broadband days).  There were often conveniently-timed "technical failures" at the state broadcasting facility that controlled our satellite uplink out of China. Those failures always happened when certain kinds of video appeared, and were more common during certain politically sensitive periods. Always plenty of technical deniability. Nobody ever admitted they were censoring anything...

Chinese journalists say enough is enough

Since the news came out earlier this week that the Chinese parliament is considering a draft law which would - among other things -  fine media outlets for reporting breaking news without authorization, the outcry from Chinese journalists and many others in China has been growing. Even Chinese media outlets like China Radio International are covering the controversy.

A number of people are following developments closely and translating key Chinese-language articles and blog posts. Roland Soong at ESWN is naturally on the case, wondering whether, if professional news outlets are prevented from covering breaking news, perhaps this might make blogs, BBS, and other citizens' media even more important?

Hong Kong University's China Media Project has excellent translation, summary, and analysis here and here. They point out that newspapers in Southern China are "are leading the push against the media-related clause." Here's one quote from a Guangzhou editorial that they have translated in full:

In such situations this clause of the draft law would actually become a tool for corrupt local officials who want to cover up their dirty deeds – a highly effective legal sanction for [these governments] to set their own ground rules and avoid watchdog journalism ("supervision by public opinion").

Read the whole post here. 

China Digital Times continues to link furiously to everything coming out on the web about the controversy. Danwei has some excellent stuff from the Chinese blogosphere (one blogger says: "Huh? So what are you going to report?"). Non-violent Resistance calls the bill an "audacious assault on press freedom" and then points us to an analysis on the website of the Beijing-based Caijing Magazine. He writes:

The story quotes Yu An, a law professor at Tsinghua University and a member of its drafting committee, as saying, "I have no idea how this clause was added into (the bill). It was not there when the experts first discussed (the bill)."

Ying Songnian, a member of the NPC's Civil and Judicial Affairs Committee who will be one of those reviewing the bill, told Caijing, "based on our experience with SARS, only information openness would help calm people down, and make disaster-relief efforts more effective."

Another interviewed legal scholar, Prof. Zhang Qianfan of Peking University's law school, says that the bill is "inappropriate" because "only under extremely peculiar situations could media coverage render more negative effects (on emergency management) than positive. The bill makes an extreme situation into a general rule, which is unbalanced legislation, and inappropriate." 

Another "constitutional law expert" who wishes to remain anonymous is more blunt, if less open about his identity: "What if a local government tries to cover up an emergency situation? Can't the media even expose that?" He goes on to call the proposed fine for media outlets "ridiculous" in the sense that, under the law, a county government trying to manage a local emergency situation like a mining disaster or avian flu outbreak, would have the power to "regulate" all media seeking to cover the incident. "How much discretionary power will this local government have?  And who is to supervise it?"

It is exactly this kind of domestic media fire what we need to thwart this EVIL attempt to silence the country's honest media outlets. So far it seems only a few are daring enough to do this, including Southern Metropolis Daily. I just hope it's not too little too late.

It is encouraging to see how many journalists in China are sticking their necks out to fight for their right to do real journalism. Let's hope that enough people in the Chinese government recognize that if the media is prevented from reporting breaking news without approval, China will become even more ungovernable than it already is. Killing journalism is bad for China's economy. It's bad for investment, which requires reliable and fast information from credible sources (not just rumors from anonymous sources in Chinese chatrooms). It will not be good for Chinese social stability, public health, disaster, response or anything else. Muzzling the media as the legislation proposes will send local corruption even further out of control.

Journalists won't stop trying, though. They will just be driven even further underground, and onto the Internet BBS forums and blogs. It will be even harder for the public to get access to reliable information for which the author is able to take responsibility, because they'll have no alternative to an online rumor mill. Public panic in the face of disasters will thus be more likely.

Such legislation will also make Chinese journalists even more disillusioned about the regime. Most of the Chinese journalists I know would like to see their government succeed. They would like to serve as loyal watchdogs, uncovering problems not to tear down the government but so that problems can be fixed and crises can be addressed. If the Chinese government won't allow Chinese journalists to play this role, it will once again be cutting off its nose to spite its face. 

Let's see how smart or dumb the Chinese leadership really is. Let's see whether they're so paranoid they're willing to destroy the country and alienate many patriotic Chinese citizens in order to stifle any possible threat to their personal power.

Never forget.

It has now been 17 years since the Tiananmen square massacre of June 4th 1989. Here's a story I did on the 10th anniversary. How many anniversaries must we pass before the Chinese government has the guts to acknowledge what happened?  As my friend Xiao Qiang points out the Internet is keeping the memory alive with videos such as the above, posted on YouTube.  Frank at GlobalVoices has a great post about the online commemorations taking place in Chinese cyberspace, including this del.icio.us page and this Flickr page.
 

Imagine if one of your loved ones died violently 17 years ago. Imagine what it would be like if the government didn't acknowledge he or she had died - and thus erased that person's existence. Imagine not being allowed to mourn in public. Imagine plainclothes policemen standing guard outside your home to prevent foreign journalists from talking to you. Imagine being sent out of town on an all expenses paid "vacation," courtesy of the Public Security Bureau every year around this time.

That's the life of Ding Zilin and probably thousands of other people. We don't know exactly how many because there is still no certain death toll - but human rights groups believe the number is in the thousands based on the  number of bodies in hospitals and morgues after the event. Professor Ding, whose 17-year old son, Jiang Jielian was shot near Tiananmen square, is now the head of the Tiananmen Mothers Group: a group of brave people who are gathering information and evidence about the victims and how they died. One day they hope to be able to hold their government to account for what was done. They want the Chinese government to acknowledge the facts of what happened. Visit the Human Rights in China page for information about her organization's latest call for justice. Click here to read more testimony from Tiananmen victims' mothers, and click here to sign a petition to support them.

Beyond Broadcast Highlights

Quote of the day:  Prof. Charlie Nesson: "There is divinity in the net and the challenge is to be gentle to your enemies."

My favorite panel of the day was about online communities - moderated by my colleague Ethan Zuckerman. He has a great writeup of his intro to the panel. Andy Carvin has great notes from Brendan Greeley's descripton of Radio Open Source and Tom Kriese about Omidyar.net. A lot of great blogging from conference participants is aggregated here.

A lot of the discussion all day focused around a question near and dear to me: how media - whether it's professional or citizen-produced - can better serve and facilitate an informed public discourse, which I believe is essential to healthy democracy. At one point during a morning panel on public media, Terry Heaton of Corante claimed that the Internet is the "new public." Several of us challenged the panel that a lot of people are excluded from this online discourse due to economic and social reasons. I asked whether American public media organizations are going to do anything to work directly on digital divide issues  so that everybody in the U.S. can have easy access to high speed internet, which is essential to full participation in online discourse. Also I asked whether they are going to do education and outreach so that people throughout society are aware of the tools that are available to them. As it turns out, unfortunately, not all public broadcasters think that should be their role. Andy Carvin of the Digital Divide Network blogged in detail about the exchange and his reaction.

Sociologist Eszter Hargittai had a great presentation about what young people really do online (thanks Andy again for the great detailed blogging). Her research indicates that giving people internet access may not be enough if you want to encourage widespread public involvement in media creation and discourse. There needs to be more education about what tools are out there and what can be done with them - and that there's a lot more to the web than chatting, shopping, and dating. She concludes: "Differences in skill, not just access, may contribute to digital inequality...Skill differences may result in differential web use suggesting different opportunities." Addendum: Lynne Johnson has an interesting reaction to Eszter's talk here.

There was a panel about business models that was as usual inconclusive. Mark Cooper: We need a different business model than charity or advertising. The problem is not distribution; the problem is attention.  I thought Mark made another important point about basically 2 kinds of journalism that are worth preserving and nurturing, and which we need to figure out how to support:

1. Professional insight journalism: High quality, expensive investigative journalism that needs to be monetized and supported financially in order to be done well.
2. Networked individualism: non-monetized work motivated by passion or duty.

UPDATE: I was going to explore the relationship between these two kinds of journalism further on day two in a workshop with Dan Gillmor, but unfortunately I have come down with a bad chest cold and went home to bed.  Fortunately, there are session notes on the conference wiki here.

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